Help (Best use of miles for UC)

Hi All,

Myself and my partner have 50k miles each and really want to fly to New York this year. We're very flexible on dates whether it be August or September for 5/6/7 nights.

Please can you help me with the cheapest, most effective way to fly UC to this destination on these dates.

I'm useless so any help would be great.

Thank you

I would probably go with M Economy fares and upgrade for 40k miles each person R/T.

Call up the FC # with a bunch of dates in mind and see what they have. They will need G availability to upgrade.

I would probably go with M Economy fares and upgrade for 40k miles each person R/T.

Call up the FC # with a bunch of dates in mind and see what they have. They will need G availability to upgrade.

Thank you for your message.

How do I get quote for an M fare?

Would it be worth purchasing 30,000 miles from Virgin and using the 80,000 for the return trip?

OK, I'll try to summarise what I've learned on this forum... Here goes:

With 50k each, you will both have sufficient miles for a return M to G upgrade to NYC. This means that you are paying for the cheapest upgradable EC fare (although this will be more expensive than the cheapest/discounted economy fare that you will normally see), including EC taxes, plus the additional taxes for UC.

I think most V-flyers will agree here that M to G is the best value use for FC miles.

The best way to do this is to call the helpline, and to buy and upgrade in one go, avoiding missing out somehow. However, if you want to get a sense of the availability in G, you can do a dummy mile booking on VS website, by picking a date, choosing UC and "spend my miles". Although you are not looking for mile redemption ticket, the reward and mile upgrade tickets in UC both come from the same fare class, being G. If G is not available on the date you chose, there will be a calendar on the next page with available dates.

My understanding is that G tickets to NYC has good availability generally, and it definitely helps that you are flexible with dates.

In terms of estimated prices, a quick search on ITA shows that for Aug/Sept you are looking at £783 for weekday and £803 for M including taxes (around £362), plus the difference in EC and UC taxes of around (another £170), so in total about £953 each.

Finally, each of you will be able to use 40k of your miles to do the upgrade, or if one of you have more than 60k, then you can do it as 60k + 20k. The rule is that you can "mix and match" as long as one person uses their miles for the upgrade of at least one sector.

Hope this helps. Sorry it's a bit of an essay!

I would probably go with M Economy fares and upgrade for 40k miles each person R/T.

Call up the FC # with a bunch of dates in mind and see what they have. They will need G availability to upgrade.

Thank you for your message.

How do I get quote for an M fare?

Would it be worth purchasing 30,000 miles from Virgin and using the 80,000 for the return trip?

As mrsw said, call them up to get a quote on M fares as their website is rather ineffective for finding this specific fare bucket.

As for using the full 80k, I would not suggest it unless the cost of the economy fare is too prohibitive. Despite not paying fare, you still pay taxes on the 80k redemption, which is oftentimes in the realm of the lowest economy cash fare anyway. Plus, if you purchase an M fare, you still earn miles and tier points, whereas on a full miles redemption, you do not.

As above. That's the most efficient use. Use JFK and EWR as arrival/departure points with date flexibility and you won't have any issue.

We did full G redemption, ie all miles, in November but that is because I was teasy with VA and wanted to burn our miles. It isn't the best use, but we did fly UC for just the cost of taxes.

eugegall, I concur with the main sentiment above. The LHR - NYC route is a frequent one for me and usually have little problem in finding an ECO-UC upgrade assuming you can be a tad flexible with which flight you are on.

M fares in the economy bucket are the lowest you can upgrade with, not forgetting taxes and surcharges of course.

In terms of purchase and full mileage redemption... In my view it is not the best use of miles as not only do you get nothing back from the transaction you end up paying the tax and surcharge amount that would be very close to the M fares and subsequent upgrade taxes/surcharges anyway. YMMV though, so it is fully dependant on how you see it.

Hope you find your Gs